Track By Track: Brighton’s Oliver Spalding Runs Us Through His Debut EP ‘Unfurl’

Hailing from Brighton, newcomer Oliver Spalding is responsible for some of the finest soulful-electro to emerge throughout 2017, now closing the year with the release of his debut EP Unfurl.

Making for the essential Monday listen, Spalding’s amalgam of haunting, falsetto harmonies, and glitchy synths threads its way across Unfurl‘s four tracks, a sound harnessed through co-production collaboration with fellow Brit artist Ed Tullett. In line with the EP’s release, the young Brightonian provides us with an insight in of how each track came to be in an exclusive track by track breakdown.

Stream Oliver’s debut EP Unfurl in its entirety now. Check out his track by track of his release below:

Hiraeth

Hiraeth is especially sentimental to me. The Welsh meaning is “A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return” and this song was situated around grief and loss in general! The company I used to exist and feel comfortable around were a little bit tainted by bad memory. Because of all this, I felt as if there wasn’t a space for me in the places I once felt most at home.

Unfurl

Unfurl is a very visual three-part song. I like to think the first section is about innocence lost and a decline in purity. The second embodies love as amphetamine -something that makes you rush with emotion for 5 hours and then the hard-hitting reality that it’s leaving causes a crash in emotion. The line “our come down I don’t feel it” is me explaining that some people are truly compatible and sometimes they never come down. Section three shows the relationship becoming toxic but also a real struggle to leave. This goes back to the recurring theme of addiction and being shackled by love. Some people just can’t handle the pressure.

Reverse Hurt

This song explains itself a little better than the others! It’s mainly about guilt and wishing a relationship would start at the worst point and eventually crescendo with the best! A full-on daydream ending with the moment you first met bathed in subtle euphoria and underlying heartache.

Epoch

Epoch means “a particular period of time marked by distinctive features, events” and it is just that. This song represents unity and strength. I want people to use that in their own lives and process it however they feel is right. Ed and I wrote Epoch just after the Paris attacks when the world felt pretty united against terror! We definitely need an Epoch right now and speaking for the younger generation the ones who will be left with an irreversible change in climate we need to stand united and stronger than ever!